Two Pretty Throws

Sandra's wool and alpaca throw

Stevie's alpaca throw

There are a couple of sweet things that have come off the looms lately.

Sandra had a throw to weave for a teenaged relative who requested the colors pink, purple, and green in a wool and alpaca throw (wool warp, alpaca filler). She had quite a time figuring out how to design with the guidelines given. Since the color choices from our yarn supplier in this narrow range were somewhat unsuitable, she opted for choosing colors as close to those as seemed to work well together for her warp, with lots of input from everyone else in the studio, including Norman. It's one of the benefits of working with everyone else...you will never run out of opinions or other points of view!

Her next conundrum appeared when she tried to use a white filler, and realized that it just didn't work. The vibrant colors of the warp were just too washed out by the white, and because of the high contrast with the warp colors, every slight imperfection of beat was revealed. What to do?!?

So we put out heads together and came up with using a filler of hand-dyed alpaca in a warm salmon orange. And...it worked. The slight variegation of the hand-dyeing helped to deepen the overall effect of the way this color interacted with all the other warp colors...it enhanced and made them rich and luscious, and created this subtle impression of a warm glow suffusing the whole. It was a very interesting exercise in applying color theory for all of us, and the end result was really a stunning piece!

Stevie has a great love of tackling complex, multi-harness projects out of the weaving magazines. She has a mind that simply adores the challenge of understanding and setting up a complex countermarche tie-up, and she has the skill and persistence to execute these projects beautifully.

This throw was woven in alpaca. It's an 8-harness tie-up and the pattern is called Pinwheel. Stevie's also weaving a run of fine scarves using the same pattern, and I know that one of our Vermont students, Beth Balon, won a blue ribbon for her entry woven in Pinwheel, last fall at the Tunbridge Fair. It's a really spectacular pattern. We'll try and post a photo of Stevie's scarves next time.

Penny's Third Week

Penny taking the first half of her blanket off the loom

Penny's unerringly classic sense of design

Penny's venetian carpet finished and off the loom

We had a really wonderful time working with Penny during her three week stay. She's such a truly authentic person, and a delight to spend time with, for she has many interesting stories to tell of her adventures in life, and has a lively frontier spirit and a wit to match it! It really feels like you are a part of our weaving family here, Penny.


So here's her carpet, all finished up...she has such a feeling for traditional colorways that are easy on the eyes and comfortable to live with, in that they will settle into any environment and become part of it, a gentle presence, much like Penny herself.


During her third week she wove off a blanket for a traditional trundle bed, in ivory and indigo single-ply wool processed by Green Mountain Spinnery. It was the closest thing Kate could find to what this kind of traditional twill blanket would have been made with, and while it was a bit of a challenge to work (springy, sticky, and a bit easier to break than the plied worsteds), Penny managed admirably, and finished the whole thing in a week, a testament to her perseverance and patience (not to mention her great desire to have a blanket!).

Come back soon, Penny. We miss you already.

"I'm as happy as a tick on a dog"....as quoted by Penny Scroggins on her stay here at the school.

Our long term student this winter is Penny Scroggins who has come all the way from Fredericksburg, Texas to brave the Vermont winter and weave three projects for her 18th c. log home. Last fall when she was here for a week, Penny made a dishtowel warp for a gold and black houndstooth and that was the first thing that we put on the loom. Penny has a fabulous collection of 18th c. furniture and she wants to weave cloth that compliments her collection.

Here is the finished warp of eight towels.

The next project was a Venetian carpet to go in her living room and we decided to use our new "Broadview Farm" carpet yarn for this rug and to dye it in five different colors. Winding the skeins is the first step.

Penny wants to learn all the processes involved in making this carpet so she jumped right in to help with the dyeing.

The finished warp on the scale.

Her beautiful carpet finally on the loom. Stayed tuned next week for the final project!

Remembering Isabelle ~ A Tribute to a beloved companion ~ April 2010 - January 2012

One morning in the spring of 2010, as I arrived to work at the school there were two feral kittens sleeping in the entry way to the barn.  They scampered off at the sight of me but when Lila arrived she set about patiently capturing them and from that day on they were part of our life at the school. We named them Rosie and Isabelle...

They quickly settled into life at the barn and found all sorts of cozy places to sleep...mostly baskets of yarn...and they never were very far from each other.

                                               Isabelle's favorite play toy.

                                           
                                 The thrum basket....after a hard day at play.

                      
                                The looms became her favorite play places....

                                          
                                                   and sleeping places......

             
                             and some students were very forgiving, like Elena.

        
                     Even as they grew to adults they still loved to sleep together.

A year ago this past December I moved them up to my house to be with their brother, Hazel, and they were my most faithful companions. Unfortuneately last weekend Isabelle disappeared at night and we have not seen her since. She will be remembered fondly by all who came into contact with her both at my house and at the school.

Last Week's Happenings

the view outside...not much snow, but definitely winter

Lynnette busy winding spools for a big warp

Zoe finished up her canvas and we had a big birthday lunch for her

Susan O working on finishing up her new blanket

Stevie working on a bright birdseye dishtowel warp

Sandra's new wool/alpaca throw beamed on

Susan W's cotton dishtowels

a short warp to test the new carpet yarn made from local sheep's wool

my latest adventure with tape

Stephanie working on her overshot piece

one of Stephanie's BIG rag rugs

Stephanie's rag placemats with different fillers

Stevie's dishtowels fresh off the loom

While this hasn't been a "typical" winter as far as snowfall goes, nobody seems to be too upset about it. We've had less than average snowfall, and perhaps more freezing rain and sleet than snow, and much milder temperatures on the whole. The driveway has been more like a skating rink than a snow fort. But in some ways it's a nice break, especially after all the snow and deep cold we had last winter.

We had a busy week...Lynnette has been occupied with winding spools for a big warp. Zoe finished up her roll of canvas over the weekend, and we had a big potluck birthday lunch for her: soups, salad, roasted potatoes, homemade applesauce, kale chips, with raw jersey milk, gluten-free compost cookies, green tea ice cream, and poppyseed pound cake for dessert. We always have a great time with birthday lunches and festive occasions around here...a lot of us like to cook and we enjoy making and sharing the things we love to eat. It helps to also have access to great local foodstuffs here in Vermont. So Zoe had a good send-off. It seems the month of January slipped by so quickly while she was here.

But the looms have been busy. Susan O has been finishing up a really nice twill blanket in Jaggerspun wool...she has such a great sense of color, and her work is always easy on the eyes and easy to imagine living with.

Stevie has been weaving a run of very brightly colored birdseye dishtowels in 8/2 cotton, playing with color relationships, which are always more challenging when most of the colors are bright ones.

Sandra has an uncharacteristically BRIGHT warp on for a wool/alpaca throw for a young relative of hers who requested certain colors that Sandra probably would never dream of putting together! So it is one of those exercises in working with colors that are not your own, and working on a project where what's going on is not necessarily pleasing to your eyes. An interesting experiment for all of us to witness!

Susan W has been working on some short warps to become more comfortable with the process of warping, beaming on, and all the set-up. Her most recent project is a 4-towel cotton dishtowel warp, and she's putting in some other color (reds) than is her usual way (neutrals).

There's been a short rug warp on to weave up a few samples using the new carpet yarn from a local sheep farmer's Romney and Border Leicester wool. Last summer Zoe skirted some 300# of assorted fleece from Bill's sheep and sent it off to Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney VT, who made beautiful yarn out of it. Kate dyed enough for this warp so that we could see what a finished product would be like, Lila wove them off on Wednesday, and we have to admit, we love the results! The new yarn is soft, durable, and takes the dye color so beautifully.

I've been socked in with tape projects lately...I finished up the last of four 7 yard warps of undyed wool galon for St. John the Divine's Textile Conservation Lab in mid-January, and then started right in on another project = 14 yards of heavy linen strapping for the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, to be used in the reproduction of some military satchels. It's very different from the galons, as the warp is stretchy and finicky and we've had to rig the tensioning of it a bit differently than we might on a shorter warp. But it's fun...having been admonished so continuously to watch my selvedges by my mother when I wove as a young girl, I somehow find this particular challenge to be very enjoyable on tapes.

And last, but certainly not least, Stephanie has been here from Old Lyme, CT for a week of setting up and weaving overshot. She is an experienced weaver, having expertise in several arcane specialties, such as Tibetan rug weaving. She has a huge 12' wide Glimakra at home that she's been weaving the most FABULOUS rag rugs on...which she brought out for a show-and-tell on Thursday, much to everyone's delight. This week was her first experience using a traditional barn frame loom, end delivery shuttle, and tenterhook, in addition to the whole process of learning to weave overshot. What a lucky dog...she can weave overshot coverlets on a 12' loom without having to make two pieces whose pattern sequences have to match up to be sewn on a center seam! It's been great having you here working with us, Stephanie, and we look forward to seeing what you'll come up with in your further adventures with overshot projects.

On to February...

Zoe's Here Working

We've been lucky this month...Zoe Sheehan is back for three weeks of intensive project work...she's here on her winter semester break from her teaching job at Baruch College in NYC to help us get a complicated plate design made for a new fabric embossing job. So we have the exquisite pleasure of enjoying her rapier-sharp wit and intelligence, while we spend hours poring over photographs, surface design books, and the computer, extracting the visible pattern from original fabric belonging to the drawing room collection of the US State Department, and then working with our design motifs to create camera-ready art to go off to our plate manufacturer.

But that's not all she's here for...in between bouts of computer work, she's been playing with an indigo discharge print of a standard bandana paisley on cotton fabric, and setting up and weaving off sixteen yards or so of cotton canvas for a dropcloth. Just that. (She's ambitious about the most off-beat kinds of things - during previous visits she's been known to weave reproductions of 49 - cent Ikea dishtowels, fine cotton twill tape to bind a cotton mop head with, samples of 3/1 twill indigo denim, and to single-handedly skirt 300 pounds of raw fleece.)

Our visits with her seem always to go by way too quickly. She's been here since January 3rd and will be leaving on the 24th...three weeks disappeared in the blink of an eye. It's a great way to get through a big chunk of winter...we have a pile of fun and get a lot of work done...because she's such a great studio person.

Thanks for everything, Z. We can't wait for you to come back.

Happy New Year....and how we spent our Christmas vacation

Happy New Year's greetings to all! After such a busy year here at the school we all decided to take some time off over Christmas to recharge our batteries and to reflect on the past year. It was a well deserved rest and speaking for myself, a wonderful time to just stay at home with my beloved cats and be quiet. The four of us spent alot of time just looking out the windows watching the snow fall down or the turkey's hunt for food. Or sitting by the woodstove drinking tea and reading. No matter what I was doing there was always at least one cat by my side...it was heavenly! And now we are back to work and ready to start another year. Many of you received our latest newsletter with highlights of the past few months and some of our plans for the future. We have lots of exciting classes scheduled with the new twist of theme weeks and the local students have some new projects of their own to dazzle us with. Eaton Hill also will be busy in the next few months as we work on another embossing job and a reproduction piece of calimanco for Colonial Williamsburg. Come spend some time with us this year if you haven't already! There is a charming apartment at my house that is perfect for student use and within walking distance to the school. Thank you all who made last year such a success! Kate